Molly De Marco's blog

In our semi-regular Question & Answer series, we have featured Meg McGurk, Executive Director of the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership and Brian Litchfield, Director of Chapel Hill Transit. The latest installment is with Robert Dowling, Executive Director of the Community Home Trust. As affordable housing discussions have been gaining prominence lately, we thought it was appropriate to learn more about the Community Home Trust.

Candidates got to start with 30-second introductions. First question was about biggest challenges, second about communication and decision-making style. Will post answers to succeeding questions below.

Extensive mold and other serious maintenance issues, unannounced inspections, living with no water, play equipment removed, violence, disrepect by management, inability to use shared resources, children not allowed to play outside.....

Would you be surprised to know that these are just some of the complaints coming from our neighbors who live in affordable housing complexes throughout Orange County (Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and Hillsborough)?

Orange County Justice United is partnering with residents in all of these complexes to organize the community, conduct neighborhood audits to acertain the extend of the issues, present these findings to management, and have the issues addressed.

The Gateway Village Apartments in Hillsborough is one such housing complex. A story about our work together can be found here.

We know that there is a shortage of affordable housing in our communities. We must work to ensure that the affordable housing that is available, is welcoming unless we want to be a community of the wealthy.

There's been quite a bit of great Tweeting about the InterCity Visit to Athens, GA. Still, there may be some of you out there who'd like to provide a little more context about what you have been learning. Please use this thread to do so. Travis and I will be posting some thoughts here as well.

The Chapel Hill Town Council was to continue its discussion this evening about how to fund the extension of sewer service to the Historic Rogers Road Neighborhood, in its first meeting of the 2014-2015 session. However, town staff is again recommending a continuation of the public hearing.